Hear from the Techie Who Launched an ICO

I always wanted to contribute in the early stages of a startup. This is basically what ICO enables.

In my past stories, I have been writing content without practical knowledge. I don’t have experience in launching an ICO, I thought of interviewing someone who has experience in building and launching an ICO. Gilad was happy to help me out.

We have with us Gilad Menashe, CTO of Vanywhere.

Tell us a few words about yourself?I have over 15 years of experience in internet technologies, security, mobile, SAAS, Blockchain technologies, AWS, web applications and computer vision. I am managing development groups for 14 years and was a VP of R&D for the past 9 years where I developed a product which became the company’s flagship and a key factor in turning them into a technologically superior market leader.My work has won multi-million dollar contracts with customers including NASA, Boeing, United Airlines, American Airlines, the Canadian Air Force, and Israel Defense Forces among others. I have also served in the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Corps (8200) as part of the development team creating (C / C++) embedded (Hardware) and desktop applications.Wow! When did you first hear about Blockchain and ICOs?Two years ago I had the chance to see how smart contract looks like and I immediately fall in love with the idea.

Well, who wouldn’t? Smart Contrant is an ingenious idea. For those of you who don’t know smart contracts, Don’t worry, I can explain.

Credits : xkcd

A normal contract is pretty dumb, It doesn’t enforce itself. You need first pay a lawyer to make a contract. Then if a party disagree on the agreement, you are supposed to again pay the lawyer to fight for you. This come at the expense of time and money.

Smart contracts are computerised contracts that enforce itself.

For Eg: Mark hasn’t paid his rent for five months. When Sara questions he promise to pay later. She is helpless and is unable to afford a lawyer. Courts take eight months to almost a year to enforce action. The only option is to persuade Mark.

If they made the agreement on a smart contract, the computer code will transfer money, from Mark’s account to Sara’s account on the agreed day of the month. It doesn’t require Mark’s consent the second time.

This would save a lot of Sara’s money and time. She doesn’t have to hire a lawyer and wait for months or years to get Justice.

Credits : xkcd

Smart contracts don’t eliminate lawyers but it eliminates unnecessary lawsuits. Thus saving the money of honest people and precious time of the judiciary.

This is the idea Gilad fall in love with.

I agree with you Gilad, smart contracts are brilliant! Tell us about Vanywhere? How does it help people?As a user Vanywhere lets you connect live with someone. Someone who can guide you through a process, relate to you and give you his full attention and expertise. As a Skiller, Vanywhere allow you to share your skill with the world, help people, and monetise that process into cryptocurrency.Do you use smart contracts in Vanywhere?Of course, the smart contract handles both payments and the rating system. When a call is initiated, the smart contract collects payment from the user and holds it for 48 hours, at which point it is released the Skiller.The purpose of this 48 hour cooling period is to create a window for disputes to be raised and resolved, should they occur. If the user is satisfied with the service they received, the funds will automatically be released to the Skiller within 48 hours. If the user is dissatisfied, they can register a dispute which the Vanywhere team will investigate.When resolving disputes, Vanywhere will consider the records of each party, and hold the tokens until the dispute is resolved. In the event that a Skiller gets a 5 star rating from a user, the tokens will be released to them immediately, without a cooling period.Credits : xkcdWhy did Vanywhere choose to launch an ICO?ICOs enables anyone living anywhere who believes in our idea to easily participate in our token sale. Smart contracts ensure our contributors are issued VANY tokens seamlessly after payment. The other reason was the payment method in our platform is based on cryptocurrency. So it was just natural to raise funds via ICO. Moreover, cryptocurrency allows you to process micro-payments, without the high fees in centralised platforms.What are the challenges you faced in launching an ICO?One of our technical challenges was how to use best all QTUM advantages and maximise the full potential of Vanywhere platform we also had to deal with a complex mechanism for handling disputes in the smart contract.

QTUM seems to be promising. It is like a cross-platform blockchain for smart contracts. In the earlier days of software development, you had to code separately for Windows OS, Mac, Linux, Mobile OS etc. Later, Java came up with cross-platform support, you can code once and deploy it on multiple platforms easily.

QTUM does something similar across different Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.This is technically not accurate, but I assume you get the idea. It basically supports interoperability. The benefit of using QTUM is if there is an advancement in Bitcoin or Ethereum (of course there will be). You would be able to make use of their features seamlessly.

Credits : xkcdHow can one benefit by contributing in your ICO?They will have the chance to be part of a growing community where they can use their tokens to buy services and even get paid in tokens for providing service.

I understand, what I like about VANY tokens compared to other tokens is its frequent use case. I am presently looking for someone to teach me guitar remotely. I am sure this would apply to people from different backgrounds like art, music, programming, travel, cooking, marketing, etc

What’s advice can you offer who are in the process of launching their first ICO?From the technical perspective your top priority should be security and that the ease of use, we want to give the contributors a very clear process and try to reduce to minimum the chance of making mistakes while protecting him from all the predators out there, things to consider are: Phishing sites, DDOS, secure all the company and employee community accounts.How can we get in touch with you?You are more than welcome to join visit our telegram (https://t.me/vanywhere) and visit our website: https://www.vanywhere.com

Thank you, Gilad Menashe.

Claps Please 👏 , Thank You 😊. Follow us, HackerNoon and me (Febin John James) for more stories.

If you are a hacker, entrepreneur, programmer,… who are doing epic stuff in the field of Blockchain or Cryptocurrency. Please get in touch with me.

I would love to share the insights you gained from your experience with my readers. I don’t charge you anything, it’s free, here is my LinkedIn.

Hear from the Techie Who Launched an ICO was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.